Resistance heroine's 104th birthday

Kyt · Feb 5, 2009

Happy Birthday to a brave lady

French Resistance heroine celebrates 104th birthday - Telegraph

Andree Peel, who lives in Long Ashton, near Bristol, survived a Nazi death squad and delayed having a family because of her work harbouring Allied airmen.

"I was born with courage. I did not allow cruel people to find in me a person they could torture," she said, as she marked her birthday with chocolates and flowers with friends on Monday.

"I saved 102 pilots before being arrested, interrogated and tortured. I suffer still from that. I still have the pain."

Agent Rose was running her own beauty salon in the Brittany port of Brest, France, when the Germans invaded.

At first she was involved in distributing secret newspapers but was later appointed head of an under-section in the Resistance.

British prime minister Winston Churchill was compelled to write her a personal letter of congratulation for her work – although it had to be destroyed immediately after it was read.

Mrs Peel, who was interned in two Nazi concentration camps in her lifetime, told the Western Daily Press newspaper that she still felt young. "I still feel like a woman of 50. I think that time has forgotten me," she said.

Her experiences with the Resistance inspired her autobiography Miracles Do Happen.

She went on: "You don't know what freedom is if you have never lost it. Everybody was ready to contribute to the fight and to risk their lives."

After the war, she met her future husband, Englishman John Peel, and they settled in Long Ashton several years later. She had no time for romance during the conflict and was in her mid 40's by the end of the war and "too old" to bear children, she said.

Mrs Peel received France's highest award for bravery, the Legion d'Honneur, from her brother, four-star General Maurice Virot.

Among her other decorations are the War Cross with palm, the War Cross with purple star, the American Medal of Freedom, the Medal of the Resistance and the Liberation Cross.
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Gage · Feb 5, 2009

Very brave woman.

John · Feb 5, 2009

I hope the reporter has checked out this story of Andree Peel aged 104. If it is true then she is a brave and great lady.
:clapping:

Antipodean Andy · Feb 5, 2009

Here's to many more for the brave lady!

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